Alexa

The names Jeff Bezos and Amazon are normally associated with quality services and goods. (For example, few people are aware that Amazon owns IMDB the site which all film buffs consider the bible for movie and television show information.) So the question then becomes why does Amazon damage its brand by being associated with such a shoddy service as Alexa? For those who don’t know about Alexa it’s a service that purports to rank websites by their traffic. However, it does so by relying on a self-selected group which consists of people who install the Alexa toolbar in their browsers. Now who would install its toolbar? Well, the answer is mostly people who run websites or blogs and understand that if you have the toolbar installed your personal visits each day to your own sites will push them up in the Alexa rankings. Members of the general population have no reason to use the Alexa toolbar.